If you've been assaulted or harassed outside Cleveland's Cocktail Lounge bar simply because you're gay, local police, whom you pay with your taxes, no longer don't to hear about it.

The bar, which has seen a string of violent anti-gay crime inflicted upon its patrons, has been told by police to stop calling the department to report the assaults. Citing a burden on tax payers, the City of Cleveland sent a letter to Cocktail Lounge owner Brian Lyons warning him to not call the police again if his patrons are assaulted as a result of increasing anti-gay hate crimes in the area.

Our records indicate from September 02, 2012 through September 01, 2013 Cleveland Police Officers and/or Dog warden have been dispatched and responded to your property located at 9208 Detroit Avenue inns for various Calls for service. Repeated calls to the same property place an and inappropriate burden on the taxpayers of the City of Cleveland and on our safety forces. The estimated cost for the city safety forces to respond to your property is approximately $100.00 per call for service.

l am confident that we share the same goal and that you will take the necessary steps to eliminate the repeated calls for police services to your property. Therefore, within 10 days of the date of this letter, you will be required to submit your action plan to the First District Neighborhood Police Commander (623-5105), outlining your strategy to eliminate the problems at this location.

Failure to address these issues, resulting in future calls for police service, will be scrutinized for appropriate administrative or law enforcement action.

It's disheartening to see the City of Cleveland telling potential victims of a horrific string of bias attacks (six since spring) that they're not worth protecting, not worthy of justice; to go on and threaten the victims and community itself with charges should it ask for help in protection against hateful violent criminals is absolutely un-American.

The Cleveland Bar should say to the police: I will call all I want until you do your job, INGRATES, and you will shut up and get over it. Either you serve and protect as your job description says or you will stop taxing me, PERIOD. You really have no choice. Ask the cops at 1969 Stonewall about what can happen if you f@#k with the LGBT community on our dime.

After reading the letter, I think it may be a form letter for when 1 address calls the police particularly frequently since it makes no mention of what the calls were for, only the number. The only way to know for sure is to call the police to another address repeatedly and see if you get the same letter. But, reading it over it sounds like its an automatic policy of the city to send them out and try to work out a way to prevent more problems in the future, rather than telling them they are not to call the police anymore. I feel a little bad for Martin Flask, who may have accidentally ruined his reputation by sending this letter.

Isn't that what the police are paid to do? So if there is a serial killer in Cleveland are the police going to publish a letter to the editor to say that they aren't going to pursue the person because of the drain on the police budget? What an idiot. Should show this to an attorney and CNN

I wouldn't let that letter stop me from continuing to call for police. The trouble makers are not patrons of his bar but outsiders. If the police fail to respond, then sue. I'm sure most lawyers would jump at the opportunity. That said, why doesn't the bar hire off duty police or other security?